• J Pain Symptom Manage · Nov 2014

    Variation of opioid use in pediatric inpatients across hospitals in the u.s.

    • James Womer, Wenjun Zhong, F Wickham Kraemer, Lynne G Maxwell, Elizabeth A Ely, Jennifer A Faerber, Dingwei Dai, and Chris Feudtner.
    • Pediatric Advanced Care Team and Division of General Pediatrics, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
    • J Pain Symptom Manage. 2014 Nov 1;48(5):903-14.

    ContextAppropriate use of opioids is essential to manage moderate-to-severe pain in children safely and effectively, yet published guidance regarding opioid treatment for pediatric patients is limited, potentially resulting in excessive variation in opioid use in pediatric patients across hospitals in the U.S.ObjectivesThe aim was to evaluate hospital variation in opioid use in pediatric inpatients.MethodsUsing data from the Pediatric Health Information System and the Premier Perspective Database regarding all pediatric inpatients in 626 hospitals, we examined hospital variation in opioid use and the length of opioid use, adjusting for patient demographic and clinical characteristics and for hospital type (children's vs. general) and hospital patient volume, using multilevel generalized linear regression modeling.ResultsOverall, 41.2% of all pediatric hospitalizations were exposed to opioids. Among the exposed patients, the mean length of exposure was 4.6 days. Exposure proportion and exposure length varied substantially across hospitals, even after accounting for patient demographic and clinical characteristics, hospital type and hospital patient volume, especially among terminal hospitalizations. For patients discharged alive vs. died, the adjusted exposure percentage for each hospital ranged from 0.7% to 99.1% (interquartile range [IQR]: 35.3%-59.9%) vs. 0.1% to 100.0% (IQR: 29.2%-66.2%), respectively, and the adjusted exposure length ranged from 1.0 to 8.4 days (IQR: 2.2-2.7 days) vs. 0.9 to 35.2 days (IQR: 4.0-7.4 days).ConclusionThe substantial hospital-level variation in opioid use in pediatric inpatients suggests room for improvement in clinical practice.Copyright © 2014 American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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